SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 5 December 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Winter, Douglas E
(1950- ) US lawyer, author and critic who began to publish work of genre interest with the short story "June 11, 1936" in Fantasy Newsletter for January 1980. His short fiction is chiefly Horror and his novel Run (2000) a nonfantastic thriller. His nonfiction includes many reviews for Event Horizon, the above-cited Fantasy Newsletter ("Shadowings" column), The ...
Stanton, Paul
Joint pseudonym of E E Vielle (who see for details) and Ceylon-born pilot, psychologist and author David Beaty (1919-1999), in UK from an early age; Beaty wrote thrillers under his own name. Writing together as by Stanton, the two wrote Village of Stars (1960). [JC]
Skene, Anthony
Pseudonym of UK author George Norman Philips (1884-1972) used primarily for his Sexton Blake tales featuring a character of his own creation, the albino Antihero M Zenith, or Zenith the Albino, who first appears in "A Duel to the Death" (21 November 1919 Union Jack #837), with many stories to follow, including Monsieur Zenith (1936; vt Monsieur Zenith the Albino 2001), his last appearance being "The Affair of the Bronze ...
Toki o Kakeru Shōjo
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui is one of the staples of Young Adult science fiction in Japan. First serialized in magazines for third-year middle-school and first-year high-school students in 1965, it has been novelized, rewritten, and adapted into many variants in the ensuing decades, each displaying unique features of the zeitgeist. As with James ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...